Pardew: We Were Resilient

21 February 2016

Alan Pardew believes that the fifth round victory against Tottenham could prove crucial as his squad look to take the positives of this game into the remainder of their league season.

"It was important and the timing of it was good because with the league form, we needed to sit ourselves down and go, 'It ain't been that bad. Let's kick on now with these final 12, 13 games that we've got left'.

"The guys showed that we were resilient. We defended well, which you have to do at Spurs. We broke well and the second half, if I'm honest, I was surprised that we handled that so well. We really did well in the second half.

"I said to the players in the changing room, 'You won't know the effects and the impact the FA Cup has until you reach the quarter-finals, the semi-final and the final. Then you understand this competition and the romance of it'."

This game has been a target for Yannick Bolasie to return following his hip injury and so it proved with a late appearance in the game from the bench for the winger.

"He is massively important, the fact he was on the bench gave everyone a boost and this week we had in Spain, seeing a bit of his exuberance lifted everybody. There's no doubt about that. He's a big player for us.

"We learned some lessons from the two Tottenham games before. We changed the shape so we didn't get pushed back so far but in doing that we had to release our full-backs to get forward. To get that goal from a full-back shows the kind of intent that we had."

Post-match the manager found out he is to face one of his former clubs, Reading, in the quarter final and he stressed how important a cup run can play in the long-term future of the club.

“The cup gained us more fans in that 1990 cup run than at any other time. And they’ve stayed with us. We’re kind of carrying a lot of fans who have a great history of it, even though we never won it.

“We’re trying to build a club and a great cup run to the semi-final, to the final, can gain you support and build you as a club. So we carry that forward and for me and the chairman and our new owners it’s about building a club.

“People were talking about Europe and stuff like that. We didn’t dismiss it but there’s some very, very big clubs in the Premier League. We must not get ahead of ourselves."